They didn't even bother locking down any of these dangling ports until somebody exploited the fuck out of them. Now they are at least going to ship Windows with the Internet Connection Firewall enabled by default, which is a good thing. They are a reactive organization - it comes with the territory of having a dominant market position and being scared shitless of change, unless and until it forces itself on them, usually by inducing fear of losing the dominant market position.
Am I the only one who thinks there should be real penalties for this kind of behavior? I mean, I understand you are supposed to try to win a case and everything, but failing to produce evidence on demand from a court should be punished, especially when the culprit has a history of presenting false and misleading information in court, and encouraging its legal agents to lie under oath. Why the fuck is it that we don't hold Big Faceless Corporations to the same standards of culpability as we hold individuals? If a small business pulled this shit in court, you'd get it up the wazoo, but when Microsoft does it, it's like the judicial system has no memory from one incident to the next.
That those 802.11b wireless access points will work really well when the power grid dies. Heh. The reason amateur radio is useful in these scenarios is that it only takes one guy with a generator to communicate with people far away, who can relay information to authorities and media agencies. Anyway, I guess I'm just missing the point, but it is somewhat comforting to know that the sky may be falling, but I'll still be able to bounce some HTTP requests for autopr0n.com through the emergency 802.11b network and get a last wank in before the world comes tumbling down.
Very interesting, I never thought of that. And IANAPOS (I am not a professor of symbology), but "chi rho" was the classical symbolic representation of the name of Christ (written in the Greek as "XP" of course, and often rendered with the P superimposed on top of and through the middle of the X). In Greek, of course, chi and rho form the first two letters of "Christos", or Christ.
Makes you wonder what that "XP" in Windows XP and Athlong XP really stands for. A plot by the religious right to infiltrate Microsoft? Hmmm...
Eh, there are cases that go both ways on the issue of EULAs and enforceability. As far as the "it's not a sale" premise, it's all based around a really twisted interpretation of copyright law - namely that by default under copyright law, you don't have the right to "make copies" of a copyrighted work, even if you purchase something that contains that copyrighted work. In order to install and use the software, you need to "copy" it to your hard drive, or at least "copy" it into memory.
Clearly, this is a pretty silly argument. Making a "copy" of a work vs. some bits moving around in the course of standard usage of a functional work are not comparable - but like I said, it goes both ways in the courts.
Too buggy for ordinary use? Hmm, I've been using Phoenix as my primary browser for almost 5 months now, and since 0.6.1 came out and they fixed the autocomplete bug, I can use it without getting frustrated. I only use IE on a few sites, and I don't remember the last time I started up Mozilla (AKA The Beast).
Explain to your manager that it's not a one person job, it's a two person job. Show them diagrams and visuals that illustrate the average number of work requests per day, response time per request, etc. Make it clear that they cannot dispute that this job requires 13-14 man-hours a day of work, and that one person going it alone cannot do the job, and that you are willing to work to train an assistant or a peer-level employee to help with the job - that you can hold out for another month or two, but that the workload is falling farther and farther behind, and this job will only serve to burnout competent employee after competent employee.
If your managers don't understand this, or can't afford another person, then the company is being run under profit - in other words, the company is not generating enough revenue to justify its cost structure, and you just need to accept that they are going to go under and decide whether you want to stick around long enough to see it happen or quit now while you're ahead. If they can afford it but refuse to pay because they believe their employees should work 14 hour days, then I recommend you start floating your resume now because they are just exploiting the hell out of you.
All that paragraph says is that legally, they don't see DeCSS as "political speech", which is the category of speech deemed in our legal system to be most highly subject to protection by the First Amendment. Now, other forms of speech are still assumed to be protected, but the protections on non-political speech may be trumped by other concerns, such as an intellectual property system that promotes investment in and development of new technology. Or preventing libel or fraud. Etc. Almost ANY speech is permissible, even if it is absolutely despicable and repugnant, if it meets the criteria set for political speech (i.e. "addressing a matter of public concern", "contributing to public debate" on an issues, etc.).
I am not positive I agree with that sentiment, nonetheless. But that's not really the point. I don't believe that trade secrets should be usable to infringe on basic property rights - a company's right to declare some arbitrarily simple algorithm, magic number, keycode, or fact to be a "trade secret" is silly to begin with. And it's certainly even worse to suggest that a trade secret that can be easily discovered by legally permissible reverse engineering should trump the rights of consumers to use legally purchased products (DVDs) in the devices of their choice. If somebody else figured it out, how can it still be a trade secret? And if you have to figure out the "trade secret" to build compatible devices to work with a widely distributed "standardized" consumer product, how could it possibly be a legitimate trade secret? These are the issues that a court should address. I would like to see this kind of abuse of intellectual property law of any sort to be stopped (i.e. sticking trademarked words in "keys" used to protect some copy protection mechanism is really no different than calling some magic numbers stuck in there and minimal algorithm a "trade secret", and both tricks have been attempted by industry groups to fuck over consumers).
Yes, but your interpretation of patent law is a relatively sane one, whereas some judges seem to have a less than sane interpretation. I agree - dependent claims are supposed to be cumulative. So how the hell does a Palm Pilot possibly meet all of the claims in this patent, which describe a VERY specific, single purpose device, not a general purpose handheld or handheld OS?
The patent system is fucked up because of the way it is practiced, by lawyers who practice patent barratry, by judges who issue stupid rulings, and by patent clerks and examiners who don't think very hard before they stamp a patent (by the way, I've been through the process before as well - in some areas it seems remarkably hard to get a patent on even a fairly novel device or application, but then you see some of the truly absurd patents that DO get through...). Sure, in theory, the legal basis for much of the system is sound, and there is a legal standard for "obviousness to a practitioner of the art", and sure, there are specific circumstances in which a patent can be held to be invalid on the basis of the existence of prior art. None of this changes the fact that in its practice, many parts of the system are quite broken.
That's different - that's Federal pork, plain and simple. That's the transfer of money to mobsters and construction moguls by way of Ted Kennedy. It really has nothing to do with tax revenue being funnelled from rural areas to subsidize urban living in the general case, which is a laughable concept. In general, urban areas produce substantially more tax revenue than they consume - it happens in New York City, as was pointed out by the grandparent poster. It is much more efficient to build roads and public services in densely packed areas where they can serve more people than it is to have to build them in spread out rural areas. And in fact, New York state provides a lot more tax revenue for the Federal government than it consumes of Federal tax dollars. Look it up, the states that have the largest negative discrepancy between tax revenue generated and tax dollars spent are poor, mostly rural states.
I'm pretty sure you're right. The weird part is that the short interest is so high, it's shorted to the hilt, and nobody wants to take a long, so you can't really go short anymore with your account. So the market isn't able to push the price down to reflect the average perception of the worth of this stock right now. And the people holding are all "believers" who aren't going to part with their shares until somebody shoves their nose right in the shit that's been coming out of Darl's mouth and lets them smell the roses for themselves. So there's no big selling movement yet, and nobody else can short. Basically this is going to hang on to a pretty high share price until the legal system has had a go with it, or until analysts with general respectability in the finance world point out what a smelly piece of shit SCOX stock is right now. And unfortunately, the lack of shares available for the borrowing (i.e. to short with) seems to mean the average Joe Investor can't turn much of a profit on this baby right now.
I'm sure this must be a fairly well known phenomenon, but it strikes me as remarkably poor marketplace efficiency - the market is supposed to be a good indicator of the aggregate psychological perception of worth of an equity, and right now the rules of engagement are preventing the market mechanism from working well for SCOX.
*bzzzt* Sorry, try again. You are just wrong on this one. Sure, people go to top notch schools, and it doesn't guarantee you anything - plenty of them will sit around in boring jobs (though the people I know from Harvard in boring jobs are mostly working boring, non-dead-end jobs in finance, where at least they end up making 100-150k in 2-3 years after graduation). And plenty of people from lower ranked schools will go on to have successful careers.
Frankly, even if you just measure the value of an education in $$'s earned over a lifetime, or $$'s earned right out of college, you'll still very clearly see the value of an education at a top school. The CS major from MIT and the CS major from SUNY Albany may be equally bright, but the one from MIT is going to land a job making more right out of college, have more choices, and be able to advance faster due to other people's perceptions. The guy from SUNY Albany can get to the same place too, but he'll have to work harder and prove more to do it.
In any case, if you want to know what I got out of my expensive Ivy League education, I'll tell you. We'll ignore the obvious good quality education, since an equally intelligent, motivated person can get that at most high quality universities, it doesn't have to be top-25 or top-50. The immediate ability to get people in places of power and authority to treat me with respect and level with me as an intellectual peer: PRICELESS. The trust of powerful people in the business and academic world who will overlook my young age due to my educational background, and entrust large budgets, investments, and decision-making to me, and take my ideas seriously: PRICELESS. Access to a social network which allows me to screen women for dating purposes (obviously, not all bright women went to a top school, but after a few years out in the real world, I have realized how much brighter the ones I went to college with were than the average woman out there - it's a mighty useful screening tool to select people who are at least intellectually compatible with me): PRICELESS.
Anyway, I have yet to have anybody give me a cushy job due to nepotism, and I don't really see what going to a top school has to do with nepotism - plenty of wealthy people get a job running daddy's company who don't and couldn't get into a top university - that's nepotism. And many if not most people at top schools are from middle class backgrounds - getting access to a social network and business network that lets you get your foot in the door places isn't nepotism at all. In fact, it allows for social mobility that wasn't possible 50 years ago when the Ivy League was effectively closed to those outside the social elite, and it was nearly impossible to get in on merit (yes, we all know schools still take legacies, but it's certainly a fairly modest minority of the student body anywhere I've ever seen).
Let's be honest - as we all know, many jobs these days have lots of qualified candidates, and it's never possible to fully judge anybody's qualifications. Doesn't it make sense that people will look at where you went to school and use the "pre-screening" that the university did inform their decisision making? I think they'd be remiss in their hiring if they didn't.
The exercise recommendation others have made is a fabulous one. Take it. But truly, the best medicine for easy distraction is, well, removing the distracting elements. My favorite trick is to unplug my computer from the Internet. That's right. I either take my laptop into the other room (and remove the wireless card), or if I don't have a laptop around, I just pull the damned ethernet cord out. Sure, I will let myself plug back in every few hours to check email, surf the web for a few minutes, and so forth, but if you find the web is always just a click away, make it so it isn't a click away (duh).
Some people swear by doing work in Starbucks and the like. Again, fine, as long as you only plug in your wireless card once in a while to reconnect. Remember that email and the web are there to provide information when _you_ want it. You are not there to serve your email account or to press "Send/Receive" constantly and otherwise enslave yourself to your machine. Whether you consider it addiction, enslavement or whatever, you have the full and complete power to avoid it, and I recommend you do so. If your willpower seems insufficient, then I recommend a trip to a shrink, exercise, or whatever will help you reestablish control over your life.
I don't think I ever said I wish death on anybody. I have no problem with people having their own opinions and trying to enact change to improve the world - I think it's your responsibility as a citizen to do so. However, when you interfere with my ability to earn a living, and my responsbility to support myself and my family, or just generally annoy me because it makes you feel good about yourself to annoy "rich, white people", then I won't shed too many tears if somebody happens to come along and wring your neck.
As to your other points, 1) I never said anything about minorities. I don't think minorities who get stuck in traffic jams caused by socialists on bikes feel any better about it than white people do. I have no idea how this is a racial issue in any way, frankly, it's about my right to earn to a living and your lack of a right to interfere with my rights. 2) Black people sitting in the front of buses weren't trying to infringe on anybody else's rights to use the bus, they were trying to exercise their rights. In your example, others could clearly still ride the bus and sit where they wanted, as long as seats were available. Likewise, I have no problem with bikers exercising their rights to share the road, to use bike lanes, etc. Purposely creating traffic jams and blocking roads to prevent me from getting to and from work is quite different - it's more like black people rioting in the ghetto and looting stores. Sure, it may be an expression of their frustration, but it's still morally wrong because it impinges on the storeowners right to earn a living, and is morally unjustified. That's why rioters should be shot on sight (and rioters!=protestors, so stop calling me a fascist). 3) Those guys didn't push for social change when they were dead - they did it when they were alive. I also think it's rather demeaning to compare these freaks on bikes who take joy out of making my life more difficult and "annoying" me, to Martin Luther King, Jr. or Ghandi. Do you think King would ever have said that his goal was to "annoy rich white yuppies"?
Oh, you mean the gainfully employed people who have jobs and families that they are stuck commuting between? Do you really think they LIKE the fact that they have to commute from the burbs every day? Maybe that's why they get _angry_ when you blockade them with your bikes. Face it bub, you are the angry, jealous one here.
I support the rights of bikers, and I am not defending the terribly inconsiderate way people drive in many cities (I'm speaking mostly of Boston and New York here, since that's where I've lived), but it effects pedestrians just as much as it effects bikers. I think the real problem is the people who want to go out and make a big scene and piss people off because it serves their rather infantile concept of social change by mob demand rather than rational discussion or argumentation. In other words, you are a whiny fucking communist, and you might want to reconsider your broken, disproven world view before you go out and piss somebody off so much that they break your fucking neck, which would be a crying shame indeed. Remember, children, you can't push for social change when you are dead.
Well, that's because contrary to what you'd expect, NYC has great tap water! The tap water here is a _lot_ better than in Cambridge, MA or South Florida, or any of the other places I've lived. They pipe it down from upstate and it's quite clean & clear. When I go to swampy places like S. Florida though, I always drink bottled, the tap water tastes like chlorinated asshole.
You are unfortunately dead on. These schools _will_ bend over for the DMCA. I fought with Harvard's General Counsel three years ago to convince him that Harvard should take a stand against the MPAA on the DeCSS issue (I was mirroring and distributing DeCSS from Harvard servers), when Harvard received a Cease and Desist letter for my actions. The sad reality is that universities aren't willing to stand up against these laws - for some reason, they think it's more important to have unqualified minority students in attendance than to fight for basic rights of information access and use - but that's another story.
I was able to get them to compromise and they allowed me to remove the executable files and leave all the relevant source code up, thereby complying with the exact wording of the C&D (if not its intent), but it wasn't exactly a public display of defiance of the DMCA. And frankly, my guess is that as soon as the subpoena comes through with the i's dotted and the t's crossed, MIT and BC will bend over like good little boys. Thinking that university's legal departments (no, the tech people at MIT have no say in this) are interested in policy issues surrounding intellectual property law is pure self-delusion on the part of slashbots.
I think it's been pretty well established in the market that there's a demand for non- or minimally-encumbered music files. Why then release crapware DRM and license-encumbered shit?
Check the EULA for this shit. Pure crap. I don't want an EULA that tells me I'm restricted to legally using my music only on approved players - isn't it bad enough that they use a fucking proprietary format, now they want to legally restrict me from using "unapproved" players? They can go fuck themselves up a tree with that attitude - when I buy a CD, I can play it on any damned player I want, and I expect the same rights when I buy music for download. At least with iTunes, you can transcode, burn to CD-R, etc. If I can't transcode it to MP3 and put it onto my mini-CD/MP3 player, you aren't getting a penny from me. And did I mention, go fuck yourselves buy.com.
Damn, are you totally disconnected from the Internet? Did you see his reference to ShareReactor? Do you have any idea how the warez scene operates at all? Sure, there are people who will distribute trojans and viruses, but that's why there are P2P networks, file rating services like ShareReactor/FileDonkey that serve as trust repositories, trusted warez groups that operate for the sake of their rep, which they have to maintain by releasing working software that doesn't zap people's harddrives, etc. Nobody said it was a perfect system, but you'd be shocked what people will do to avoid spending money. Sure, there is some price people would pay for the trust service of guaranteeing quality, of content/bandwidth/distribution, but that's what they are putting a price on, not the software itself. Just like Red Hat's customers are putting a price on Red Hat support (and CD distribution, perhaps), but not on the software itself. Somebody might be willing to pay 20 bucks for a Red Hat CD so they don't waste a day downloading a corrupted ISO, but the only reason they'd pay 300 bucks for a Red Hat CD is Red Hat support.
All the costs you are describing, aren't really footed by consumers. The cost of keeping my eMule or Kazaa client running and sharing files is zero on the margin - I don't pay for that bandwidth usage, at home, at work, or anywhere. So yes, I think I might as well give it to a million people and feel good for contributing back to the community - a bit ironic, but it seems to work.
Sure, it's ambiguous, but so are most legal documents. "One could easily argue" is a phrase that can be pulled out in any legal argument. I think one could argue the (L)GPL means almost anything, but there's an interpretation that's widely accepted, and common understanding of a legal document carries a lot of weight in the area of contract law - if both parties think it means A, but somebody comes along later and says it means B, a court will often hold the earlier interpretation if it falls under something like the doctrine of mutual mistake (sorry, you'll have to google this stuff, I'm too tired to link). In fact, the common understanding of the (L)GPL is the reason a lot of people choose it. It's much harder to argue that you don't understand your obligations under such a widely known and used license (vs. the Enhydra Public License).
Go back and read the LGPL again. The terms in Section 5/6 are not the terms commonly used with Java, sure, but the intent is pretty much crystal clear. If you use material from header files (read: interfaces or general class descriptions - the stuff that goes in header files in the C world) to make calls into the classes falls outside the scope of the license. The LGPL is no more or less befuddling with respect to Java then it is with respect to other languages. Likewise, the relationship elucidated between your object code and the LGPLed object code, whether it be in JAR or DLL format, isn't terribly different. If you contain or reuse too much of a library in your code, there's always a fuzzy, slippery slope of what constitutes a derived work. Again, this is really no different from the way the LPGL would apply to C/C++.
So Section 5 applies just as it does with non-Java code. Likewise, Section 6 is pretty darned clear. Section 6b still applied for Java - Java runtime linking meets all the requirements of 6b. What's the big deal? As long as the LGPLed library (or it's "modified form" you distribute under your own terms, per section 6) is distributed in a separate JAR, it can be replaced by another, recompiled version of the JAR. You can change one line of code, and recompile the original library to a JAR file, distribute it under your own terms, just provide source for your "modified" version of the library, and you have complied with section 6. Voila. There's no need to jump through these hoops though, section 5 still applies, let's not get our panties in a bunch, the sky has not fallen.
Those aren't features of C++, they are proposed features of C++0x. If C++ were really all that bad, why would everybody use it? I mean, it's bad, but just bad enough for "worse is better" (Google the phrase, I'm not going to bother pointing you to the original articles on the topic). Sure, there are a lot of features, but basically everybody uses the sane subset thereof, and every once in a great while, if they really, really need it, they can use some of those fancy, destruct-o-matic features.
God I am sick to death of the confusion. I think the Robert X. Cringely pen name has lived it's useful life. I mean, fine, to be a succesful tech pundit you need an 3733+ sounding name, like Simson Garfinkel (cool because of its phonic resemblence to Simon and Garfunkel) or Robert X. Cringely (how cool is the letter X? And the name Cringely is the shit too). But can't we just make some new ones up, so we don't have to keep wondering whether Robert X. Cringely is the PBS one, the Infoworld one, the PC whatever one, or what have you? The trademark dispute effectively ended its useful life, time to move on and create some new cool sounding tech pundit identities for the 21st century.
Is to explain the tradeoffs to your manager and make a decisions jointly. The one mystifying thing you wrote is that you did a quick hack previously, and then got in trouble for it, even though it helped bring in contracts. This probably means communication about the project and its nature was poor. Did the marketing people understand they were showing demoware 2003, and not something finished and working? Did your manager have buy in about showing such a thing off to get a contract?
Sometimes quick and dirty is right for the company, and sometimes well engineered is right for the company. On the one hand, products that miss the market are likely to result in a company that goes out of business. On the other, products that get to market but are so shitty people can't use them won't win market share, unless they are the only game in town, or there is some sort of major contractual lock-in. Ultimately, quality is an engineering tradeoff factor, along with development time, and all those other tadeoff axes (gosh, I forgot my project management 101 stuff - go read "Rapid Development" for a decent primer on this - it's a great book, you won't regret it even if it is from MS press). The key point is that these are decisions that will affect the business and product engineering side of the company, so don't make them unilaterally and then get shocked when people feel fucked over.
Slashdot Mirror
They didn't even bother locking down any of these dangling ports until somebody exploited the fuck out of them. Now they are at least going to ship Windows with the Internet Connection Firewall enabled by default, which is a good thing. They are a reactive organization - it comes with the territory of having a dominant market position and being scared shitless of change, unless and until it forces itself on them, usually by inducing fear of losing the dominant market position.
Am I the only one who thinks there should be real penalties for this kind of behavior? I mean, I understand you are supposed to try to win a case and everything, but failing to produce evidence on demand from a court should be punished, especially when the culprit has a history of presenting false and misleading information in court, and encouraging its legal agents to lie under oath. Why the fuck is it that we don't hold Big Faceless Corporations to the same standards of culpability as we hold individuals? If a small business pulled this shit in court, you'd get it up the wazoo, but when Microsoft does it, it's like the judicial system has no memory from one incident to the next.
That those 802.11b wireless access points will work really well when the power grid dies. Heh. The reason amateur radio is useful in these scenarios is that it only takes one guy with a generator to communicate with people far away, who can relay information to authorities and media agencies. Anyway, I guess I'm just missing the point, but it is somewhat comforting to know that the sky may be falling, but I'll still be able to bounce some HTTP requests for autopr0n.com through the emergency 802.11b network and get a last wank in before the world comes tumbling down.
Makes you wonder what that "XP" in Windows XP and Athlong XP really stands for. A plot by the religious right to infiltrate Microsoft? Hmmm...
You are right. I guess I need to go back and read those EULA cases again.
Clearly, this is a pretty silly argument. Making a "copy" of a work vs. some bits moving around in the course of standard usage of a functional work are not comparable - but like I said, it goes both ways in the courts.
Too buggy for ordinary use? Hmm, I've been using Phoenix as my primary browser for almost 5 months now, and since 0.6.1 came out and they fixed the autocomplete bug, I can use it without getting frustrated. I only use IE on a few sites, and I don't remember the last time I started up Mozilla (AKA The Beast).
If your managers don't understand this, or can't afford another person, then the company is being run under profit - in other words, the company is not generating enough revenue to justify its cost structure, and you just need to accept that they are going to go under and decide whether you want to stick around long enough to see it happen or quit now while you're ahead. If they can afford it but refuse to pay because they believe their employees should work 14 hour days, then I recommend you start floating your resume now because they are just exploiting the hell out of you.
I am not positive I agree with that sentiment, nonetheless. But that's not really the point. I don't believe that trade secrets should be usable to infringe on basic property rights - a company's right to declare some arbitrarily simple algorithm, magic number, keycode, or fact to be a "trade secret" is silly to begin with. And it's certainly even worse to suggest that a trade secret that can be easily discovered by legally permissible reverse engineering should trump the rights of consumers to use legally purchased products (DVDs) in the devices of their choice. If somebody else figured it out, how can it still be a trade secret? And if you have to figure out the "trade secret" to build compatible devices to work with a widely distributed "standardized" consumer product, how could it possibly be a legitimate trade secret? These are the issues that a court should address. I would like to see this kind of abuse of intellectual property law of any sort to be stopped (i.e. sticking trademarked words in "keys" used to protect some copy protection mechanism is really no different than calling some magic numbers stuck in there and minimal algorithm a "trade secret", and both tricks have been attempted by industry groups to fuck over consumers).
The patent system is fucked up because of the way it is practiced, by lawyers who practice patent barratry, by judges who issue stupid rulings, and by patent clerks and examiners who don't think very hard before they stamp a patent (by the way, I've been through the process before as well - in some areas it seems remarkably hard to get a patent on even a fairly novel device or application, but then you see some of the truly absurd patents that DO get through...). Sure, in theory, the legal basis for much of the system is sound, and there is a legal standard for "obviousness to a practitioner of the art", and sure, there are specific circumstances in which a patent can be held to be invalid on the basis of the existence of prior art. None of this changes the fact that in its practice, many parts of the system are quite broken.
That's different - that's Federal pork, plain and simple. That's the transfer of money to mobsters and construction moguls by way of Ted Kennedy. It really has nothing to do with tax revenue being funnelled from rural areas to subsidize urban living in the general case, which is a laughable concept. In general, urban areas produce substantially more tax revenue than they consume - it happens in New York City, as was pointed out by the grandparent poster. It is much more efficient to build roads and public services in densely packed areas where they can serve more people than it is to have to build them in spread out rural areas. And in fact, New York state provides a lot more tax revenue for the Federal government than it consumes of Federal tax dollars. Look it up, the states that have the largest negative discrepancy between tax revenue generated and tax dollars spent are poor, mostly rural states.
I'm sure this must be a fairly well known phenomenon, but it strikes me as remarkably poor marketplace efficiency - the market is supposed to be a good indicator of the aggregate psychological perception of worth of an equity, and right now the rules of engagement are preventing the market mechanism from working well for SCOX.
Frankly, even if you just measure the value of an education in $$'s earned over a lifetime, or $$'s earned right out of college, you'll still very clearly see the value of an education at a top school. The CS major from MIT and the CS major from SUNY Albany may be equally bright, but the one from MIT is going to land a job making more right out of college, have more choices, and be able to advance faster due to other people's perceptions. The guy from SUNY Albany can get to the same place too, but he'll have to work harder and prove more to do it.
In any case, if you want to know what I got out of my expensive Ivy League education, I'll tell you. We'll ignore the obvious good quality education, since an equally intelligent, motivated person can get that at most high quality universities, it doesn't have to be top-25 or top-50. The immediate ability to get people in places of power and authority to treat me with respect and level with me as an intellectual peer: PRICELESS. The trust of powerful people in the business and academic world who will overlook my young age due to my educational background, and entrust large budgets, investments, and decision-making to me, and take my ideas seriously: PRICELESS. Access to a social network which allows me to screen women for dating purposes (obviously, not all bright women went to a top school, but after a few years out in the real world, I have realized how much brighter the ones I went to college with were than the average woman out there - it's a mighty useful screening tool to select people who are at least intellectually compatible with me): PRICELESS.
Anyway, I have yet to have anybody give me a cushy job due to nepotism, and I don't really see what going to a top school has to do with nepotism - plenty of wealthy people get a job running daddy's company who don't and couldn't get into a top university - that's nepotism. And many if not most people at top schools are from middle class backgrounds - getting access to a social network and business network that lets you get your foot in the door places isn't nepotism at all. In fact, it allows for social mobility that wasn't possible 50 years ago when the Ivy League was effectively closed to those outside the social elite, and it was nearly impossible to get in on merit (yes, we all know schools still take legacies, but it's certainly a fairly modest minority of the student body anywhere I've ever seen).
Let's be honest - as we all know, many jobs these days have lots of qualified candidates, and it's never possible to fully judge anybody's qualifications. Doesn't it make sense that people will look at where you went to school and use the "pre-screening" that the university did inform their decisision making? I think they'd be remiss in their hiring if they didn't.
Some people swear by doing work in Starbucks and the like. Again, fine, as long as you only plug in your wireless card once in a while to reconnect. Remember that email and the web are there to provide information when _you_ want it. You are not there to serve your email account or to press "Send/Receive" constantly and otherwise enslave yourself to your machine. Whether you consider it addiction, enslavement or whatever, you have the full and complete power to avoid it, and I recommend you do so. If your willpower seems insufficient, then I recommend a trip to a shrink, exercise, or whatever will help you reestablish control over your life.
As to your other points, 1) I never said anything about minorities. I don't think minorities who get stuck in traffic jams caused by socialists on bikes feel any better about it than white people do. I have no idea how this is a racial issue in any way, frankly, it's about my right to earn to a living and your lack of a right to interfere with my rights. 2) Black people sitting in the front of buses weren't trying to infringe on anybody else's rights to use the bus, they were trying to exercise their rights. In your example, others could clearly still ride the bus and sit where they wanted, as long as seats were available. Likewise, I have no problem with bikers exercising their rights to share the road, to use bike lanes, etc. Purposely creating traffic jams and blocking roads to prevent me from getting to and from work is quite different - it's more like black people rioting in the ghetto and looting stores. Sure, it may be an expression of their frustration, but it's still morally wrong because it impinges on the storeowners right to earn a living, and is morally unjustified. That's why rioters should be shot on sight (and rioters!=protestors, so stop calling me a fascist). 3) Those guys didn't push for social change when they were dead - they did it when they were alive. I also think it's rather demeaning to compare these freaks on bikes who take joy out of making my life more difficult and "annoying" me, to Martin Luther King, Jr. or Ghandi. Do you think King would ever have said that his goal was to "annoy rich white yuppies"?
I support the rights of bikers, and I am not defending the terribly inconsiderate way people drive in many cities (I'm speaking mostly of Boston and New York here, since that's where I've lived), but it effects pedestrians just as much as it effects bikers. I think the real problem is the people who want to go out and make a big scene and piss people off because it serves their rather infantile concept of social change by mob demand rather than rational discussion or argumentation. In other words, you are a whiny fucking communist, and you might want to reconsider your broken, disproven world view before you go out and piss somebody off so much that they break your fucking neck, which would be a crying shame indeed. Remember, children, you can't push for social change when you are dead.
Well, that's because contrary to what you'd expect, NYC has great tap water! The tap water here is a _lot_ better than in Cambridge, MA or South Florida, or any of the other places I've lived. They pipe it down from upstate and it's quite clean & clear. When I go to swampy places like S. Florida though, I always drink bottled, the tap water tastes like chlorinated asshole.
I was able to get them to compromise and they allowed me to remove the executable files and leave all the relevant source code up, thereby complying with the exact wording of the C&D (if not its intent), but it wasn't exactly a public display of defiance of the DMCA. And frankly, my guess is that as soon as the subpoena comes through with the i's dotted and the t's crossed, MIT and BC will bend over like good little boys. Thinking that university's legal departments (no, the tech people at MIT have no say in this) are interested in policy issues surrounding intellectual property law is pure self-delusion on the part of slashbots.
Check the EULA for this shit. Pure crap. I don't want an EULA that tells me I'm restricted to legally using my music only on approved players - isn't it bad enough that they use a fucking proprietary format, now they want to legally restrict me from using "unapproved" players? They can go fuck themselves up a tree with that attitude - when I buy a CD, I can play it on any damned player I want, and I expect the same rights when I buy music for download. At least with iTunes, you can transcode, burn to CD-R, etc. If I can't transcode it to MP3 and put it onto my mini-CD/MP3 player, you aren't getting a penny from me. And did I mention, go fuck yourselves buy.com.
All the costs you are describing, aren't really footed by consumers. The cost of keeping my eMule or Kazaa client running and sharing files is zero on the margin - I don't pay for that bandwidth usage, at home, at work, or anywhere. So yes, I think I might as well give it to a million people and feel good for contributing back to the community - a bit ironic, but it seems to work.
Sure, it's ambiguous, but so are most legal documents. "One could easily argue" is a phrase that can be pulled out in any legal argument. I think one could argue the (L)GPL means almost anything, but there's an interpretation that's widely accepted, and common understanding of a legal document carries a lot of weight in the area of contract law - if both parties think it means A, but somebody comes along later and says it means B, a court will often hold the earlier interpretation if it falls under something like the doctrine of mutual mistake (sorry, you'll have to google this stuff, I'm too tired to link). In fact, the common understanding of the (L)GPL is the reason a lot of people choose it. It's much harder to argue that you don't understand your obligations under such a widely known and used license (vs. the Enhydra Public License).
So Section 5 applies just as it does with non-Java code. Likewise, Section 6 is pretty darned clear. Section 6b still applied for Java - Java runtime linking meets all the requirements of 6b. What's the big deal? As long as the LGPLed library (or it's "modified form" you distribute under your own terms, per section 6) is distributed in a separate JAR, it can be replaced by another, recompiled version of the JAR. You can change one line of code, and recompile the original library to a JAR file, distribute it under your own terms, just provide source for your "modified" version of the library, and you have complied with section 6. Voila. There's no need to jump through these hoops though, section 5 still applies, let's not get our panties in a bunch, the sky has not fallen.
Those aren't features of C++, they are proposed features of C++0x. If C++ were really all that bad, why would everybody use it? I mean, it's bad, but just bad enough for "worse is better" (Google the phrase, I'm not going to bother pointing you to the original articles on the topic). Sure, there are a lot of features, but basically everybody uses the sane subset thereof, and every once in a great while, if they really, really need it, they can use some of those fancy, destruct-o-matic features.
God I am sick to death of the confusion. I think the Robert X. Cringely pen name has lived it's useful life. I mean, fine, to be a succesful tech pundit you need an 3733+ sounding name, like Simson Garfinkel (cool because of its phonic resemblence to Simon and Garfunkel) or Robert X. Cringely (how cool is the letter X? And the name Cringely is the shit too). But can't we just make some new ones up, so we don't have to keep wondering whether Robert X. Cringely is the PBS one, the Infoworld one, the PC whatever one, or what have you? The trademark dispute effectively ended its useful life, time to move on and create some new cool sounding tech pundit identities for the 21st century.
Sometimes quick and dirty is right for the company, and sometimes well engineered is right for the company. On the one hand, products that miss the market are likely to result in a company that goes out of business. On the other, products that get to market but are so shitty people can't use them won't win market share, unless they are the only game in town, or there is some sort of major contractual lock-in. Ultimately, quality is an engineering tradeoff factor, along with development time, and all those other tadeoff axes (gosh, I forgot my project management 101 stuff - go read "Rapid Development" for a decent primer on this - it's a great book, you won't regret it even if it is from MS press). The key point is that these are decisions that will affect the business and product engineering side of the company, so don't make them unilaterally and then get shocked when people feel fucked over.